We need our ec2 servers on AWS to do their daily automatic updates, but if one day a package is updated that causes an error, we need to be able to roll back that package as yum can do with the “yum history” and “yum history rollback X” commands.
Is there something similar to this functionality in zypper, or do we have to switch to using DNF directly?
I want to comment that we can’t have BtrFS on those machines because they have quite small disks (in addition to not having official images that support such filesystem in the AWS Marketplace).
All package versions starting with GA are kept in repository and you can always install any previous version you need. You are not forced to stay on the latest version.
I know what you are talking about, but what happens if the machine requires little disk space? do you have to have a large disk to store the history of installed packages?
I know very well that it is not something very exaggerated, but I find it hard to believe that a marvel like zypper does not contemplate something so basic in an enterprise environment as mentioned.
Hi @arvidjaar thanks for your quickly answer. It’s true that the history of installed/updated packages are stored in RPM database, but if massive update keeps your computer in a wrong state, it could be useful to do a rollback all update with a rollback command like yum/dnf can do with history command:
@bgta
Thats why snapper snapshot rollback exists in openSUSE…
If you differ from the recommended setups like btrfs with snapshots, you as admin should be able to deal with that and have alternative ways to recover your systems…
@toomany You mentioned enterprise environment…are you using SUSE Enterprise or openSUSE?
If you have been able to read the first post, we are talking about that the official opensuse images in AWS Marketplace, by default, do NOT support BtrFS because of a disk space usage issue. If we could have such support, snapper would be a wonder like few others.
We are using opensuse leap… well, actually we want to replace the aws linux and centos 7.x machines and opensuse leap, and we are analyzing all the pros and cons that we would have with all the operation.
If you focus on what is being talked about, the lack of support for zypper to work with a “history” command like yum does, I think it makes exactly the same difference if it’s “us” or “me”.
And please, let no one take this sentence as a pejorative, but simply as a fact that I needed to confirm.
Anyway - the information that is used by yum to rollback is specific to yum - it is not kept in general RPM database (which keeps track of installed packages but not previous history). Usually, images in cloud are expendable parts - you do not modify them, you create new image and revert back to old one if needed.
There is no counterpart zypper functionality (dnf history) in openSUSE. If you need that resource, you need System Recovery (snapper) with its own restrictions and complexity - say,
a file system with subvolumes configured as proposed by the installer and a partition size of at least 16 GB.
In the eventual case of zypper dup let you in bad system state, that’s a problem. It would be a great if existed that functionality in zypper itself.
